In quintessential triviality for years in this fleshcase a shesoul dwelt.

"Basil, my dear boy, puts everything
that is charming in him into his work. The consequence is that he has
nothing left for life but his prejudices, his principles, and his
common sense. The only artists I have ever known who are personally
delightful are bad artists. Good artists exist simply in what they
make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. A
great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all
creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinatiing. The worse
their rhymes are, the more picturesque they look. The mere fact of
having published a book of second-rate sonnets makes a man quite
irresistible. He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others
write the poetry that they dare not realize."
-Lord Henry Wotton, The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

"We have grown out of Wilde and paradoxes."
-Buck Mulligan, Ulysses by James Joyce





Today I wrote. And wrote. Here's one reason why:

Last night I got a horrible migraine...it was so painful, and so bad, that I lost sight in part of my left eye. I had no peripheral vision in that eye. It was like a cloudy black circle had formed in the lower corner of it. It was extremely scary. I have never had this happen to me before. Well, actually, a few months back I would sometimes get extreme pains around my eye socket and in my eye, like it hurt to look out of it. So we got my eyes checked and they were fine. In fact, I have 20/20 vision. Now I see what was the real problem. It's not my eyes at all. It's my nerves, I suppose. Those were migraine symptoms.

But the weirdest part is when I was partially blinded, I just thought... laying there in my bed, trying my best to stay calm and to try and let the wretched clamp on my head fade...is I just thought...how will I be able to write? I thought my sight would come back, but for that one fleeting second...I considered the possibility that...what if it didn't? Would I, too, wear the eyepatch on my left eye?

So this morning when I woke up and my vision was okay, I promised myself I would write. And not waste time...my head still aches a little.

I'm sure maybe both Wilde and Joyce are right. I spent the better part of the day inside instead of outside living what I muse. But I don't know how to achieve what I think up. But at the same time, I grow tired of paradoxes like that. Why can't I find meaning in a perfectly menial world? Why can't I be both a poetic creature and a poet? Or perhaps it is my appearance. How that thing gets in the way.

Jin and I critiqued each other's work. It was really fulfilling, I think. She writes such jaunty and delightfully-worded prose. Sometimes you need that. To forget about actuality. Actually...

Poetry, even when apparently most fantastic, is always a revolt against artifice, a revolt, in a sense, against actuality. - James Joyce

So I suppose they were both right. I'm especially quoteish today, aren't I?

I will show the poem I produced:

Procrastination

There are days when
laying, naked, fat
in a bubble bath
win over the plans
that ambitiously wrap
each hour,
setting them to work.

The bath is sickeningly hot
and scalds my white, pasty skin
like thick dough dipped
in kitchen grease
adipose burns, flushes pale cream.

I sink into the water
which, thankfully,
hides me from my self,
and I think.

The bubbles form
intricate chain links
of gilded armor
like mythic mail,
mother of pearl,
beading delicately
to protect me
from the blows of obligation
and the slow sting of time...
The white foam surrounds
like the flag of surrender
creeping over the tub's confines
to defend the dreamer
in her wreath of bubble-clouds,
simply a sheath to keep her
from anything worthwhile,
anything too, too wretchedly hard
and fast.

But for now
I am a chubby cherub
Imagining, undeservingly,
of an archangel who would fight for me.

I lounge like lard, my hair is limp
in water tinted yellow with
the light overhead, artificial--
suds pooling microcosmic ripples
in a shallow sea.

There is no devil
to fight,
I realize,
still soaking it up
in all its sodden glory,
only sloth,
and the doubts that flaked away
my will to run,
but will I ever stop
eating the chocolates I find
sitting innocently on the table
Or do I lust,
Not love, that fabled angel?

Stringing poetry in my mind
It is all forgot
in an instant
strung like bubbles,
tepid pearls of thought
that disappear, fickle,
and only sand grains of will
down a drain
Tomorrow I will...

Maybe someday it will read:
-"Sophomoric" by Kelsey Sheehan

Don't get your hopes up.